Aaaugh!!! Riley Gaines, according to Wikipedia

had originally wanted to become…a DENTIST!!

It’s funny: when I was in dental school in the 1970’s there were three basic categories of individuals:

1. People laser-focused on their studies so that they could qualify for a specialty program such as orthodontics or periodontics or for a General Practice Residency in one of the high-falutin’ hospitals in some major metropolitan area. We used to call them “throats”.

2. Laid-back people who enjoyed their music, alcohol, pot, sex, and the like all the while doing well and becoming vaguely or more than vaguely humanistic practitioners (count me among those). Generally reasonably interesting and helpful people with a few exceptions of course.

3. The RW brush-cut military-types who were sanctimonious beyond human comprehension about everything under the sun and acted as though their shit didn’t stink and were superior in every way to the ethnic crowds beneath them. Our code word for them was “Nazis” as in “Didja hear what the Nazi said to Amy when she failed her operative practical exam? She was crying inconsolably for hours afterwards. What an asshole!” Of course, on the side these people were cheating on examinations, lying outright, stealing instruments and materials. If accused, they’d react with feigned open-mouthed horror. They could lie like nobody’s business and I should know: I was on the Student Ethical Panel for two years, reviewing cheating cases. But you better be careful around them because there were times when they acted like the Brownshirts.

Riley would have fit right in….she missed her true calling.